1. Field
Embodiments of the present disclosure relate to an apparatus and method for controlling transmission of data traffic, and more specifically, to a technique of distributing data traffic into several routing paths when a congestion condition occurs during transmission of data traffic.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Various methods are known for improving efficiency of data transmission in network environments. For example, an overlay networking technique may achieve improved transmission efficiency by disposing at least one intermediate node or overlay hop between a source node and a destination node.
Even when the overlay networking technique is used for data transmission, a congestion condition may occur due to various factors such as a packet loss, an increase in a round trip time (RTT), and sporadic degradation of a transmission path. When such a congestion condition occurs, a congestion avoidance technique for rapidly decreasing a transmission rate of a path along which data is transmitted may be necessary. However, according to conventional congestion avoidance techniques, if the transmission rate is reduced, then the transmission rate is likely to be gradually increased. This is because, without the alleviation of the congestion condition, a sudden increase in the transmission rate may cause harm to network fairness, that is, fair allocation of shared network sources.
Further, if a protocol for guaranteeing data transmission is adopted in the overlay network environment, continuous attempts to retransmit lost data may aggravate the congestion condition. In order to address the problem, it is possible to transmit, from a source node, the same data over a plurality of pre-defined paths (for example, three paths), and to pick up the data first received at a destination node. According to this approach, even when a congestion condition occurs on a path, the data may be successfully transmitted over a different path. However, a larger number of the transmission paths may require a higher amount of traffic cost for the data transmission.
Moreover, in the transmission of various types of data such as stored massive data (for example, large files that are already stored in a storage device) or real-time multimedia data (for example, real-time generated audio, video or a combination thereof), it is of great importance to reduce a delay time.
In view of the foregoing, there is a need for a novel technique for facilitating highly efficient data transmission if a congestion condition occurs.